Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Archives: 10/2009

Reid’s Option: Does it help or hurt the chances for healthcare passage by Christmas?

My response:

Like every other part of ObamaCare, the “opt-out” proposal for the “public option” is a mystery – and almost certainly will continue to be even after the likely 1,500-page bill emerges, if ever it does. Will residents in states that opt-out be able to opt-out of the taxes needed to support the public option? (Please don’t say the public option will be self-supporting: we’re grown-ups.) Healthy taxpayers in North Dakota, after all, have no incentive to subsidize unhealthy New Yorkers. But if states can opt out of the tax part, then we’ll have “adverse selection” at the state level, the very thing the “individual mandate” is meant to stop at the individual level. Yet if states won’t be able to opt out of the tax component, then what’s the incentive for states to opt out of the public option? All pay, no benefit, is a sucker’s game.

This is all smoke and mirrors. And it’s laughable to think that the Congressional Budget Office can score any of this, when nobody knows what “this” is. For all the backroom dealings so far, enough has taken place in public to enable the public to see what’s going on, and it’s not pretty. It’s the usual something-for-nothing gimmickry, like last week’s “doc-fix” joke. The vote on that is the best predictor so far of where this whole thing is going. When labor tells us they might accept a tax on high-value insurance plans if it doesn’t hit the middle class, we know the money isn’t there. May ObamaCare rest in peace until more sober people are able to attend to what’s really required to straighten out the health care mess that Congress created in the first place.

Here’s a story about a “VIPR” team performing a “sting” operation on innocent Americans at a bus terminal in Florida, searching their persons and bags and discovering their petty crimes.

It’s almost a certainty that whoever named this sub-unit of the Department of Homeland Security thought it was a clever way to convey machismo and give a sense of mission to members of VIPR teams. But it also illustrates how the 9/11 terrorist attacks have caused the United States to lose its grip and behave like a cornered snake rather than a strong, free country.

The natural illogic of VIPR stings is that terrorism can strike anywhere, so VIPR teams should search anywhere. It’s the undoing of the Fourth Amendment, and it’s unwarranted counterterrorism because it expends resources on things that won’t catch or deter terrorists. Indeed, VIPR “stings” may encourage terrorism because they show that terrorism successfully undermines the American way of life.

The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more “choice” and “competition”) to expand government power. But why would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when Medicare hasn’t?

Contributing Editor Shawn Macomber introduces a Q&A with me by telling his readers:

Daniel Griswold is not shy about sharing the high aspirations he harbors for his superlative new book Mad about Trade. Griswold has managed to compose a volume as accessible and persuasive as it is indispensable, as fresh and uplifting as it is firmly grounded in accumulated wisdom–a rare bird, indeed.

Here’s a striking graphic of the results of continuing New York Times/CBS News polling on the question, “Do you think the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans, or isn’t this the responsibility of the federal government?”

Support for a government guarantee of health insurance starts dropping sharply as the country starts debating the topic. It’s not clear from this graphic, provided by Gallup, but support is at 64 percent in June, 55 in July, and 51 in late September, well after the Long Hot August and just after President Obama’s health care blitz that included his primetime speech to Congress and highly publicized rallies in Minnesota and Maryland. Note also that the question doesn’t mention any downsides of the government guarantee; respondents apparently had figured those out for themselves.

Oddly enough, if you search the New York Times site for this question, nothing comes up. And if you Google the question, the Times isn’t in the search results. It’s almost as if they didn’t want to publicize their very interesting finding. You can find a reference to it here and documentation here.

How and when should the Fed unwind the enormous monetary expansion it undertook in response to the financial crisis and recession? The WSJ reports [$]:

As the Federal Reserve’s next meeting approaches in early November, an internal debate is brewing about how and when to signal the possibility of interest-rate increases.

The Fed has said since March that it will keep rates very low for an “extended period.” Long before it raises rates, however, it will need to change that public signal to financial markets.

Because the recovery is so young and is expected to be so weak, many central bank officials are comfortable, for now, keeping rates very low. But they are beginning to strategize about how to walk away from the “extended period” language.

My suggestion is that the Fed announce a path of gradual increases in the federal funds rate, say beginning next year and lasting for two years, until the rate is at some “normal level.”

This approach is different than what the Fed is likely to undertake; it will probably want to maximize “discretion,” the ability to adjust on the fly as conditions unfold.

My approach maximizes predictability and reassurance: it commits the Fed to shrinking the money supply and heading off future inflation. This reassures markets and takes substantial uncertainty out of the picture.

The problem with my approach is the pre-commitment: everyone knows the Fed could abandon a pre-announced path.

But such an announcement might still give markets useful guidance, and the Fed would know that any deviation would itself upset markets, and this might encourage adherence to the pre-commitment.

Including a Fannie Med with a “state opt-out” provision in the Senate Democrats’ health care bill accomplishes only this: it helps Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) survive as majority leader by appeasing his left wing. It doesn’t make it any more (or less) likely that Fannie Med will survive.